It has been said that great comedians display characteristics of psychosis, and comedy legend W. C. Fields is perhaps no exception on the one hand he was a masterful performer with a perfect sense of timing a sharp-tongued wit, yet he also had a reputation for being a misanthropic miser suspicious of everyone. Echoing the life of Charlie Chaplin, Fields began performing in vaudeville shows as a "tramp juggler" before launching a career in Hollywood which straddled the silent and talkie eras. He is perhaps most famous for his 1940 movie The Bank Dick, his drunken security guard role seen by many as a classic example of his on-screen persona embodying many of the qualities he exhibited in real life. His fondness for alcohol was unsurpassed even by the standards of his booze-drinking Hollywood friends. Cases of liquor were stacked in the attic of his Los Angeles home when Fields showed them to his fellow comedian Harpo Marx, Marx asked, "Bill, what's with all the booze?" to which he quipped, "Never can be sure Prohibition won't come back, my boy." As was the case with Errol Flynn, however, this dependency soon led to cirrhosis of the liver which eventually caused his death in 1946. When asked what he would change about his life if he could live it all over, W. C. Fields had replied, "You know, I'd like to see how I would have made it without liquor."
